AIBU to wonder why Universal Credit journal entries barely ever get a reply??

[UndertheCedartree]

I have a longstanding 4 year battle with Universal Credit. According to the annoying messages when you try to phone them the journal can be used for anything. But how so when an answer is so rare. And usually just states the query will be passed over to the case worker who will contact me - but of course they never do. I can't make the phone calls alone as I end up in tears and have a lack of support right now - Care Co is long term sick, Children's social worker left as did my DV counsellor. My volunteer was stopped.

Does anyone have any inside knowledge as to what is happening? Why does noone answer the journal??

That’s weird I’ve had answers (with names under them so not a system generated response) to the two or three messages I’ve put on there. Maybe it depends on which job centre you belong to?

I don't know why they don't reply but it's bloody infuriating. The only benefit is that there's a paper trail of all the times you've tried to contact them!

I had the exact same issue when I was claiming. It ended up with them trying to claim over 5k in back payments that I never even received because some idiot out a date in wrong and no one ever looked at my journal.

I have no answers other than try and speak to someone at CAB and see if they can help you make the calls?

Mine are answered promptly every single time x

Because they are too cheap to hire enough staff

If you can get to an advice agency like CAB or similar, they may be able to escalate the query. (I work in welfare rights and we can do this). It will then go to someone senior to sort out.

Otherwise, you could complain to your MP and get them to ask the minister to ensure you get a reply.

I have had to escalate a couple of cases like yours recently. Both were instances where the queries were unusual one and I suspect the reason the clients never got an answer was because the work coach/case manager didn't know the answer.

The staff working on UC only get the most basic training in what is a massively complex benefit. They're required to know the equivalent of JSA, ESA, income support, housing benefit and some tax credit rules. Each of these legacy benefits was dealth with specialists for a reason - they're bloody complicated.

UC training is so poor I was recently asked to do a benefits calculation for someone who is a UC work coach!

@Bobsyer @damnthisvirusandmarriage - wow, that makes it seem even worse! I thought I'd cracked the code once where if you sent the message to every option you got an answer but even that doesn't work now. I wish I knew the trick. I need to phone really as maybe once every 10 calls you get someone who is able to help. But it is getting me so down. A 4 year slog I just can't bare it anymore. I need to find someone to do a call with knowing that only do you have to listen to the music (which I have grown to hate) but you have constant cheery messages (did you know you could use your journal) I hate the fucking journal, I hate the fucking phone calls, I hate the fucking money worries!!

Does anyone know if you can get backdated money for a disabled child?

The last response I had in May was they are sending me forms for the third time as they'd lost the previous 2. Since then nothing. I've sent 20 messages - all unanswered.

@LakieLady - thank you. Up until a year ago my social worker would ring then once a week with me (for 2 years) even so it was rare to find someone who could really help. It does seem an incredibly complicated system. I am going to try and see if even duty could perhaps help me or pastoral care at my DD's school. MP is not good unfortunately wouldn't even help me with a very straight forward tax credits issue in the past, just washed his hands of it all!

Mine are always answered the same say or the next day. Maybe it depends on the office that deals with your claim. I think mine always comes up as Macclesfield.

I also have this problem, and lost my shit after they “couldn’t hear me”.
I’m also not getting any sense, as I want to know what to put down for hours (change of work) when one is 28hrs and one is 0 hours contract.

I think the previous poster is right, when they don’t know the answer they just ignore you.

Have you got a mental health centre like Mind near where you live? They often have a benefits advisor, and Gingerbread (single parent charity) if you are a single parent have benefits advice.

It’s shit, really shit, and I feel your pain. Also, maybe tell them on the journal that the lack of a response is having a negative impact on your mental health.

@BlueistheNewme - I have tried that a few times but they seem to not care atall. You tell them what it is doing to you and there is not one ounce of sympathy. I was in a really bad way once and posted lots about my mental health. The idiots sent an ambulance to my house!! If they'd just read the journal they would have known I was in hospital already!

@BlueistheNewme are you declaring a change of circumstances to your work and earnings?
Just put the average hrs you expect you will be working. Is it PAYE? The earnings should come through automatically from HMRC and that’s what your UC pay is calculated on, in assessment periods.

As your query is a payment query, mark is as a payment query so the case manager is notified.

Op- all messages are flagged to the case manager or the work coach, if you have one.

If you’re not in the group that has a work coach then it’s just a case manager, they can manage hundreds of customers at a time. They will respond if needed. What sort of messages are you sending?

Thanks CiderJolly, I’ll try that. I get so worried that if I do it wrong they will sanction me. Then I become paralysed with The Fear!

UnderTheCedarTree - that’s ridiculous that they sent the ambulance when you were an inpatient.

When you said Care Co, is that with the Community Mental Health Team? They have a duty worker who takes the calls when care co’s are off. so they should be able to find out which voluntary agencies can give benefits advice. Or even ask the social worker/assistant to help you call.

I've always had replies usually from my work coach but occasionally from someone else when they've been away.

Only once have I not had a reply but it was over Christmas so must have just got missed.

Because we have 1,500 claimants each and journal messages are the penultimate thing we do, so we usually get to them by Wednesday or Thursday and have so many to do that it takes all day.

As a case manager we have 5 'triggers' (Numbers in brackets are the average we have to deal with in a day)

Trigger 1 is to triage new claims that came in overnight, (10) and a few other time critical things (to-dos), like verifying childcare,(0-5) verifying terminal illness, (rare) verifying social housing (2-3) and verifying caring (1) this is up to 1/2 hour per day

Trigger 2 is manual payments (2-10), so for whatever reason approx 10% of claims have payment that need manual intervention, either to calculate the deductions (2-8) or to calculate the entire payment because of non standard housing, (2 per week) or to print statements for telephone claims and put them in the post.(2-4) this is up to an hour per day

Trigger 2 is blocked cases (40-60), figure out why they are blocked from making payment and take steps to unblock them, like calling self employed people to ask them to fill in their income and expenses, this takes 2-3 hours per day.

Trigger 3 is Journal messages, (10-14) this can take upwards of 1 hour per day usually about 3 or 4

Trigger 4 is payment accuracy where all the overpayments and underpayments and students and mortgage to-dos are.

Trigger 5 is other actions, like consider close claim .

Inbetween all that, outside of triggers are the handovers (4-8) and contacts from telephony and work coaches to help out customers (3-4)

I usually get up to my journal messages in a day and stay there for the rest of the day. As you can imagine, there are a broad range of things in there and it can be a simple as 'no, you can't have an advance' to spending hours to try to find out who can do this specific rare to-do. Usually there are advance requests (3-4) rti disputes (1-2), questions about the statements (3-4), explanation/mandatory reconsideration requests (1-2) explanations of a change (2-4) requests that we pass onto the jobcentre (1-2) questions about how to report changes (3-4) and stumpers that you hang on to for weeks until you solve them

I am up to journals for the 11th (have 7 older that I had to pass over for someone else to action), and currently have 35 so I am 3 days behind, and I am relatively quick, one of my colleagues has 70+ journal messages, I try to help her out sometimes but she just can't seem to keep them down, most people have between 10 and 30 at any one time.

So yeah, we don't always get to them every day, and we are not always able to answer them

Regards the backdating for a disabled child, it has to be sent to a decision maker. You will generally only get backdating to the date of the disability award if you have asked as soon as you got the award notification. A decison maker referral is currently taking about 3 months for decisions, once a decision has been made a case manager gets the handover to calculate the backdated payments, which takes half an hour to prepare the documentation and 3 days to be checked, then 3 days for you to get the payment.

There is also a really helpful section on your claim if you log in, it is a link that you can see from your Home page, that says something like ‘How to Manage your Universal Credit Claim’. So much useful information that if used before asking questions on the journal might save both the customer and case manager some time.

@Musereader that sounds awful
But, being honest, I wouldn't mind waiting for a delay replying I'd they didn't tell us things would be done by x date.

For eg I applied for lcwra element in April/may 2020. Had a telephone app in July 2020. Then didn't hear anything until summer 2021 despite repeated messages and calls. My work coach had never heard of it. Got put in lcw group and asked for a mandatory reconsideration. Apparently I'd already had a appeal
They agreed to the mandatory reconsideration and said I would hear back by my next payment date of 28th August. I still haven't heard back other than one message asking why I thought I should be in the lcwra group.

I've tried all the benefit help people locally. They are all so snowed under they aren't taking on new cases.

Yes if we don't know an answer you sit there until we get one, which can be weeks if no-one knows. I currently have a journal message a month old because I have not yet discovered how to add a corporate appointee to the claim, supposedly it has been passed to the person in the jobcentre who can do it but it has not been looked at despite me sending 4 emails asking for it to be done.

Our jobcentre we are linked with has 1 person to do the private rented housing verifications, she is over 300 behind and it is not even her only job, but she doesn't get any more help with it.

@CiaoForDiNiaoSaur I think the group where you get extra money for being found not capable of any work related activity (such as preparing for work in the future, online courses, confidence building etc) is quite rare and usually only found with severe disability. The work capability assessments are looking at what you are able to do rather than focusing on the health condition. If you’re not happy with the outcome and you’ve already tried appealing then you could contact your local MP maybe?

[quote CiderJolly]@CiaoForDiNiaoSaur I think the group where you get extra money for being found not capable of any work related activity (such as preparing for work in the future, online courses, confidence building etc) is quite rare and usually only found with severe disability. The work capability assessments are looking at what you are able to do rather than focusing on the health condition. If you’re not happy with the outcome and you’ve already tried appealing then you could contact your local MP maybe?[/quote]
I haven't been to appeal though. That's kind if the point. They said I can't do any thing else until they have decided on the mandatory reconsideration. Even though I've apparently already appealed.
I was told (by someone from the JC) that I should qualify for lcwra.
Every time I speak to anyone it's a different person who tells me a different thing.

No-one in the JC can tell you if you will qualify, it’s assessed by an external provider, this is their website for any queries-
www.chdauk.co.uk/universal-credit-uc

There will be an appeal process, can’t remember the order- I’ll look it up for you now.

Thanks

www.turn2us.org.uk/Benefit-guides/Universal-Credit/How-do-I-challenge-a-Universal-Credit-decision

Lots of information here, just keep reading and it takes you through step by step.